DOING THE MATH

Nothing new to report, really. Just the same-old, same-old:

Information released at the Boston bombing trial reminds us the suspect did what he did because American troops prosecuting the War on Terror were killing innocent Muslims.

British chicks inspired by social media are headed out to join ISIS.

Two policemen were shot in Ferguson, MO, during a demonstration reacting to the federal Justice Department report of widespread racism in the police department.

Revealing videos surfaced, one showing frat boys from the University of Oklahoma chanting racist sentiments, another immortalizing the fraternity's house mother gleefully repeating the n-word as she sang along to a rap song. Seemed to me she was just using the opportunity to have some good clean racist fun. Why else shoot such a video?

Another unarmed black man was killed by a white policeman, this time in Madison, Wisconsin. More protesters hit the streets with the familiar chant: Black Lives Matter.

Folks do what they do because they know what they know. They look the situation over and "do the math."

One might imagine guys joining ISIS just so they could have a chance to kill folks, using religion as cover. Or maybe they're sincere.

Chicks apparently want to join so they can become sex slaves to the fighters or hump a backpack suicide bomb to a clogged check point full of Christians or Shia Muslims.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropped his pressure-cooker bomb amidst the crowd at the finish line of the Boston Marathon knowing full well "innocent" civilians will be killed.

He did the math.

An eye for an eye, baby. If American soldiers can kill "his" civilians, he feels justified in killing "ours."

In our defense, we can argue: Hey, it's a war over there! Shit happens in a friggin' war!

(That's us, doing our own math.)

Tsarnaev can argue the same: The U.S. is in a war against Islam. Anything you do to Muslims we can do to you. Turnabout is fair play!

(He's balancing the equation.)

We used nukes during WWII. Soon as they can manage it, the "terrorists" will do the same. Tit for tat. And they know they're right. More math.

Every new drone strike targeting jihadist leaders proves them right. The equation is solved: America is in a war against Islam! The school-yard excuse ("Well, you started it on 9/11!") is turned against us: "No, no! You started it! Long before 9/11!"

(We engineered the coup that brought the Shah back to Iran, among other politically selfish actions.)

Tsarnaev felt justified in his actions because of what he knew to be true. (Would we better accept his attack if he'd waved an ISIS flag as he set his bomb to work?)

In the same way, if white policemen are going to keep on murdering unarmed black guys, cops everywhere should expect some righteous payback. It's only fair, right?

Do the math.

How long before suicide-bent black guys decide to start something with the police just to prove the reality of what they can so clearly see?

When protesters say Black Lives Matter they mean Stop Killing Us In The Street! It doesn't matter that all the high-profile cases of white cops killing black guys appear to be examples of justified shootings.

If in the future some cops are indicted by grand juries, it might be because the juries were worried how black folks will react to one more non-indictment. That would truly be a case of "No Justice," though the reality of their misjudgment might be impossible to untangle.

The question is, would such an action quiet the mob? Or would it merely prove to the protesters that all those earlier non-indictments were unfair.

It doesn't really matter. Protesters don't need to get bogged down in the details. They already know all those shootings were cold-blooded murders.

They've done all the math they need to do.

The situation may have entered a death spiral. It's inevitable: There will be more killings of unarmed black men. (Or, for that matter, armed black men.) The list will always increase, new cases popping up on a random schedule. (Random reinforcement is the most powerful method of learning new behavior.) No amount of arguing the facts will get one name removed from the roster of the martyred.

Protesters are forced to take this position: No action by a black man can ever justify the use of lethal force.

Cops have another opinion: When a man comes at you, action must be taken. That's their math.

During take-downs, where guys have to grapple physically with uncooperative suspects, the thing cops fear most is the bad guy grabbing their weapon and using it on them.

This very legitimate worry figures in a number of prominent cases (Michael Brown in Ferguson and the homeless fellow in Los Angeles). I think it's fair to say the fear of losing control of a weapon may cause premature escalation of an incident.

Interestingly, the Boston bombing trial has revealed a twist on that topic. The Tsarnaev brothers attempted to get a gun from a campus cop in Cambridge. They failed because the man's weapon was locked in a holster only he could operate.

Considering that most police officers never draw their weapons, maybe a slight delay in retrieving a service pistol could be tolerated, if such a delay would lessen the fear of giving up that weapon to the offender.

Beyond that, cops need better technology to take down unruly folks, a method that doesn't involve lethal force. And that new technology needs to be right there with the officer at the scene, not locked in the trunk of selected vehicles.

Imagine a standard-issue handgun that could only be fired by a cop, a weapon that was capable of firing a number of different types of rounds, from deadly jacketed lead to less-than-lethal rubber pellets to some sort of sticky glop that could bind a perp in goo and remove him from a position of threat.

Unfortunately, new technology cannot erase what so many people already know to be a rock-solid fact: Racist white cops are murdering black men all across America.

Things may eventually cool off, but the list of the murdered dead will never shrink.

Another unfortunate fact: Even if every case is found to be a legitimate shooting, we may never be able to erase the possibility the cop acted properly despite an underlying racist attitude.

Here's an analogy: A drunk driver may not have caused the accident, but he was nevertheless driving drunk. Would an unimpaired driver have had a chance to avoid the collision?

We may not actually be doomed by racist (and other faulty) thinking, but maybe it's close enough. In this case, the math is still being calculated.